In 55 BCE, Julius Caesar decided (according to his Commentaries) to “cross the Rhine since he saw the Germans were so easily urged to go into Gaul, he desired they should have fears for their own territories when they discovered that the army of the Roman people both could and dared pass the Rhine.”
This became one of history’s best recorded punitive expeditions. Caesar sought to show the German tribes that the Romans could cross the Rhine at times of his choosing and stay as long as he desired. Caesar’s legions used local wood to build a bridge across the Rhine in ten days and spent eighteen days in Germania raiding local tribes. When the Germans mobilized for a major battle, Ceasar immediately moved his forces back across the Rhine and dismantled the bridge in his wake. The Germans lacked the engineering skill to re-create the bridge, or the mass of boats needed to move a large force across the river. Caesar repeated this feat two years later. These punitive expeditions against both Germania, and also a campaign in Britain, served to deter hostile action from outsiders as he pursued his conquest of Gaul. Germans did not cross the Rhine in force against Rome for more than 400 years.
The recent, month-long US operation against the Houthis in Yemen, “Rough Rider,” has all of the hallmarks of a punitive expedition. The Houthis have held the Bab al Mandeb Strait and Red Sea hostage to international shipping since late 2023. For the US, it was a relatively casualty-free operation with two aircraft lost in accidents and a number of unmanned aerial vehicles being downed. News reports suggest several “near misses” but combat operations always involve risk. US aircraft were downed with air crews killed or captured in Lebanon in 1983, in the First Gulf War of 1991, and operations in the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, including an F-117 Stealth aircraft shot down in 1999.
During the Biden administration, operations against the Houthis were more short-term and conducted in response to specific attacks. The month-long Trump administration campaign was more about punishing the Houthis, and threatening the return of US strikes if the rebellious group again attacks American merchant shipping and warships in the region. The US expanded the targets of its air and missile strikes to include port facilities, weapons storage, command and control facilities, and Houthi leaders. These US Navy operations did not aim to collapse the Houthi regime but rather to coerce it to cease attacks against US and other ships.
The larger question is whether or not this strategy against the Houthis will have any long-term effects. Caesar’s operation secured the Rhine against major invasions for centuries. But US Navy and Marine operations in 1801-1805 only temporarily delayed the Barbary pirates’ campaign, and the truce signed only lasted until 1807, when the pirates again began capturing American ships. The Royal Navy heavily bombarded the main Barbary city of Algiers in 1816, but even then, pirate activity did not cease until the 1830 French invasion of Algiers ended that independent North African state. The US Army’s punitive expedition” into Mexico in 1916 and 1917 failed to capture bandit leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa, whose forces had raided US border communities.
History suggests that the results of a single punitive expedition are generally fleeting, unless follow-up expeditions are conducted. It is unclear if the Houthis are sufficiently deterred from again attacking commercial shipping. On June 21, Houthis threatened to renew attacks on US ships, if “the US is involved in an attack against Iran.” Additional operations may yet be required to deter Houthi leaders.
Such operations are costly in weapons expended for both attack and defense. But the alternative – surrender of key maritime chokepoints to aggressive non-state actors – is not acceptable. European, Asian, and US governments might decide to ignore the Houthi blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and instead incur the extra operating and environmental costs of moving shipping around the Cape of Good Hope instead of the Suez Canal, but that might only encourage more malfeasance at other key maritime choke points. Rather than regard Operation Rough Rider as an anomaly, observers should see it as a harbinger of responses to come in the face of growing instability around global trade routes.
